Why dull, dumpy, divorced men are the new sex gods

According to solicitors, couples have rushed in droves to divorce ahead
of the cuts to the £2 billion legal aid budget that came in this month.

May – when the wedding season traditionally gets going – is around the
corner, but this year we seem to have fewer weddings and a funeral on
Wednesday – and a lot of accelerated divorces.

Meanwhile, Tom Cruise reportedly told German TV last week that he never
expected to be divorced at 50 (a comment he later denied making). But I
can’t worry about Cruise. He’s a fun-sized movie star and, like many
men, he can arise phoenix-like from the ashes of his marriage.

Phoenix: Cruise does not have to worry about being divorced as he can rise from the ashes and get back on the market

The ones I worry about are the ex-wives, who often can’t.

For where I live, there must be five available, attractive and lively
divorced women to each available – if ever so slightly dull – divorced
man. It wouldn’t matter if he was a wife-beater, serial killer or had
sex at Premier Inns with strangers he met online: the male of the
species is still a trophy guest and the woman, generally, isn’t.

As my husband jests, if we ever split up, I would join the ranks of
predatory females in their forties, flicking my blow dry in desperation
as I trolled the internet for a mate, whereas he, handsome and with all
his own hair, would be a total catch at sixty.

Indeed, he would never
have to cook a meal again, he reckons, so swamped would he be by
competing invitations. All he would need to do is coast majestically
through the remaining ocean of his life, like a large whale, opening his
jaws for female plankton only when he felt like it.

This problem is endemic. There is even a column in a national newspaper
called The Plankton, ‘written by a divorcee at the bottom of the sexual
food chain’, which tells you all you need to know about the different
value society places on single men and single women.

Wherever you live, a nice, normal ‘extra man’ is a semi-mythical
creature of rare report, like a snow leopard in the mountains of Bhutan,
whereas a nice, normal single woman is often just excess baggage.

Now, for some reason (divorce), a few more male singletons have suddenly
been released on to the market, which is causing great excitement among
local hostesses. One – nice, normal, ie not Tom Cruise – came to
‘kitchen supper’ last week so I had an opportunity to test out my
husband’s theory.

‘Frank,’ I asked (not his real name. He started sweating with panic
during our exchange that I would use it). ‘What’s it like, you know, OUT
THERE?’

‘Well, what happens is, you meet someone and you jump into bed with them
immediately, and then, if you like them . . . um . . . you try to
find intimacy afterwards.’

This may be too much information for you but it wasn’t enough for me.
‘You mean you have sex with people you’ve only just met?’ I shrieked. I
am old-fashioned that way.

‘Yes,’ Frank said.

At this point a student listening said: ‘The middle-aged dating scene sounds exactly like the first year at Edinburgh.’

But this doesn’t work both ways. As I’ve observed, if you’re a
newly-single man, you’re a prime cut of Fresh Meat. But if you’re a
newly-single woman, of the same vintage, you’re ‘not wanted on voyage’.
But back to Frank’s sex life.

‘Do you do it a lot?’ I asked.

‘I could do it every night if I wanted to,’ he said.

Why is this? Well, all the obvious things. A man who is reasonably
presentable, and not actively psychopathic, has his pick of women of any
age. Women generally have a more limited range to choose from (their
age and older). As poor Ms Plankton has written, ‘all I want is a
companionable, kind, age-appropriate person who can string two words
together, is largely heterosexual and preferably doesn’t live in
Auckland.’

But the real rub is, divorced women aren’t just short of social capital,
but actual capital, too. According to the LSE’s Professor Stephen
Jenkins, who’s conducted a major study on the financial impact of
divorce, men on average get richer after splitting up and women get
poorer. The ex-husband’s income goes up by around one third, while the
ex-wife’s drops to one fifth of its previous level. The women who
survive divorce best, he says, are those who are either in paid work or
who find a new partner.

This must explain, then, why many divorced women are still so keen on
what Mrs T called the ‘weaker sex,’ and why men are so sought after.
It’s a case of supply, demand, and dosh too.

‘So, what sort of women do you meet?’ I asked Frank over pudding.
“Divorced women my age. Younger women, singles . . . but they’re even
more frightening,’ he added. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because they want to get married,’ he replied, with a little shiver.

It does seem to appear that my husband has a point, which is annoying.

Come on Liz! Can't you do anything wrong?

Liz Hurley cheated on Hugh Grant, as we discover from the kiss’n’ tell book written by an actor she had on the side.

According to this panting luvvie, their affair started when Miss Hurley
cooked a gourmet supper in her hotel, performed a scorching striptease
on a table-top, and then put on a display of sizzling event sex.

Hurley did not comment on his ungentlemanly revelations. She merely
tweeted a picture of her tanned self, clad in one of her own tiny white
bikinis. I am appalled. Honestly, Liz! Can’t you think of the rest of
us for once? You are setting the bar high – far too high – for all our
comfort.

The two secret pillars that held up the Iron Lady

Supported: Margaret Thatcher

If behind every great man there’s a woman rolling her eyes, who’s behind
every great woman? In Mrs T’s case, it was two older men.

She had the
austere grocer, Alderman Roberts, from whom she ‘learnt everything’, and
from whom she took her cue.

‘He brought me up to believe all the things
I do believe and they are the values on which I fought the election,’
she said in 1982.

Then she had Denis, the ‘golden thread’ running
through her life.

The influence of these men explains to me why she did not feel it
necessary to promote other women.

She was so motivated by one and loved
by the other that she couldn’t understand how other, less fortunate,
well-educated, supported or confident women might need further favours.

Still, she paid her dues to the true blue who stood by her. ‘Without
Denis I would have never reached the starting blocks,’ she admitted.

I agree with columnist Sandra Parsons about the identity of the killer
in ITV’s Broadchurch. We both think it’s Ellie’s partner.

He is a
smiley, younger house-husband who spends ages at the swings with the
kids. Our shared suspicion is proof that hardened working mothers find
no type quite so threatening as the contented, patient, domesticated dad
in casualwear.